Binge Drinking: A Serious Unrecognized Problem

by Robert Chapman, Ph.D.

Unbeknownst to the average viewer of the popular media, there is
significant controversy regarding the term "binge drinking."
This term, so prominently employed to address the issue of high-risk
drinking by contemporary collegians, is far from the "accepted
term" of those who work in the field of alcohol and other drug
prevention. Heavy drinking is a serious problem. No one denies that.
But many of my colleagues and I have great difficulty with a definition
of "binge drinking" that is tied to a specific number
of drinks, and in particular to 4+ drinks for women and 5+ drinks
for men.

Allow me to preface my remarks by stating that I have no argument
with referring to 4+/5+ drinks as high-risk, perhaps even abusive
drinking. To quantify "bingeing", however, as 4+ drinks
in one sitting for women and 5+ drinks for men is inaccurate at
best, and may even contribute to the very problem that those reporting
"binge drinking" statistics intend to confront.

In many media reports of college student alcohol consumption,
there is no mention of what constitutes "a drink." True,
the Harvard School of Public Health defines the term in its publications,
but this crucial information does not appear to make it into the
mainstream media that have covered this issue with great zeal since
its initial 1994 publication in the Journal of the American Medical
Association. This "definition of a drink" is crucial information
for students to have if they are to make sense of any attempt to
quantify "binge" or high-risk drinking. For example, most
students tend to relate how much they drank by counting the "number"
of beverages consumed rather than the amount of alcohol contained
in each. In so doing, the male student who has "4 pints of
beer" will have nonetheless inadvertently entered the high-risk
zone even if he has paid attention to the admonishment to have 4
or fewer drinks.

To tie "bingeing" to a number of drinks is dangerous
for two readily apparent reasons, at least to those of us who work
in this field. First, some women will have dangerously high blood
alcohol levels--because of their size, their elevated estrogen levels
while on the pill, or because of their rapid consumption after only
2 or 3 "standard" drinks (a standard drink equals 10 oz
of beer, 5 oz of wine, and 1.5 oz of 80 proof spirits). The same
problem is likely for some males who have fewer than five drinks.
By the same token, I am not sure that a 240-pound linebacker on
the college football team is going to have a very high blood alcohol
level if he drinks 5 beers in an evening--and herein lies the segue
to point #2.

Second, students who hear all the hoopla about binge drinking by
college students and then are confronted with the 4+/5+ drinks definition
are likely not only to dismiss the "binge drinking is a problem"
message as unrealistic, but they may well dismiss everything that
health educators, administrators, parents, and other concerned individuals
have to say about the consequences of high-risk drinking associated
with a 4+/5+ drinks pattern. The irony is that there is significant
evidence to suggest that the very points being made by those who
employ "binge drinking" are true, that is, students who
engage in high-risk drinking do earn lower grades, miss more classes,
and are involved in more cases of violence, and vandalism. Unfortunately,
because students have tuned out what they consider to be an absurd
yardstick for measuring consumption, they may also tune out the
opportunity to recognize the negative correlation between amount
consumed and grades or the positive correlation between amount consumed
and alcohol problems.

A final criticism of the term "binge drinking" as defined
above, even if we assume it is here to stay, is that it still only
addresses the tip of the "collegiate drinking iceberg."
If 44.1 percent of students are "binge drinkers," then
55.9 percent are not!

When the media tell us that binge drinking is rampant on our campuses,
it does not take much to "hear" that "all" college
students are "drunken fools." You know this is not so.
I know this is not so. The Harvard research team knows this is not
so. But the media nonetheless convey this message, either by design
or neglect. While there is little if any good research to suggest
that scare-tactic approaches to community education translate into
permanent changes in individual high-risk behavior, there is mounting
evidence to suggest that programming designed to convey accurate
information about the true behavioral norm for a given population
does translate into individual behavior change as the misperceptions
of the social norm are corrected.

I close with two simple suggestions. First, we need to rethink
the utility of the term "binge drinking" particularly
when referring to 4+/5+ drinks per outing. How about the term "high-risk
drinking" as an alternative? Second, the primacy of low-risk
drinking by the majority of college students needs to be accentuated
when discussing collegiate drinking. I venture to guess that many
will be surprised with the result.

Dr. Robert Chapman is the coordinator of
the Alcohol and Other Drugs Program at La Salle University in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. He is adjunct professor of counseling and coordinator
of the addictions counseling concentration in the M.A. program in
Clinical Counseling Psychology. His website is www.lasalle.edu/~chapman.

References

Baer, J. S., et al. Biases in the perceptions of drinking norms
among college students. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 1991,
52(6), 580-586.

Haines, M.A. A Social Norms Approach to Preventing Binge Drinking
at Colleges and Universities. Newton, Massachusetts: Higher Education
Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention, 1996. Visit www.edc.org/hec/pubs/socnorms.html,
where this important document is posted.

Haines, M. , and Spear, S. F. Changing the perception of the norm:
A strategy to decrease binge drinking among college students. Journal
of American College Health, 1996, 45, 134-140.

Larimer, M. E., et al. College drinking and the greek system:
Examining the role of perceived norms for high-risk behaviors. Journal
of College Student Development, 1997, 38(6), 587-598.

Page, R. M., et al. Relationship of the estimation of binge drinking among college students and personal participation in binge drinking: Implications for health education and promotion. Journal
of Health Education, 1999, 30(2), 99-103.

Prentice, D. A., and Miller, D. T. Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol
use on campus: Some consequences of misperceiving the social norm.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1993, 64(2),
243-256.